


Subtle Resistance

by Plantress



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Cerberus - Freeform, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Spies, omega - Freeform, or at least they sort of are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plantress/pseuds/Plantress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(OC-centric)Sequel to 'Just a Moment'.  Cerberus has taken over Omega and thrown the lives of those that live there into chaos.  Layla, not one to just lay down and let Cerberus do what they want, has her own ideas to cause trouble for the invaders. She just has to make sure she doesn't get distracted looking for the one bit of information that's personally important to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtle Resistance

**Author's Note:**

> This was something I've been working on for a while. When I posted 'Just a Moment', I was surprised by several people asking me to do more stories with Layla and Bray in them. I hadn't been sure that anyone would even be interested in my little hacker, so that was a nice surprise. This skips a head a bit, to what I thought Layla would be doing when Cerberus hit. She's not a fighter, but I couldn't see her just leaving them alone either. I also had fun writing her reaction to wondering about WTF had happened to Bray, since I assume he would have escaped off Omega with Aria. She trusted him a little too much for me to believe he was just some random guy she ran into while she was in exile.  
> Maria is my friend DaHaloChick's character. She's Layla's BFF, and I will try to write more about how they met someday. I do think I might write a sequel to this someday.
> 
> Also, bit thanks my beta OinkythePiggy for reading over this!

The small Omega bar wasn’t an outstanding example of it’s kind. A few months ago it barely had any clientele to it’s name. Not surprising since it was little more than a hole-in-the-wall box, with booths running along one of it’s walls and a wide bar taking up the other side. It clearly hadn’t been decorated with taste in mind; dark faux-wood textures mixed with colored fixtures so bright they were headache inducing. Everything still had the smooth finish of things that hadn’t seen much wear yet, although it had seen an upswing in patrons lately. Layla was fairly sure that the decor had nothing what-so-ever to do with that little fact. She nursed her single drink and huddled in a dark corner at the very end of the bar. Not her usual seat, but this gave her the best view of her target without being in his line of sight. She didn’t think the Cerberus engineer had even noticed her when he and his buddies had come in to drink, but it never hurt to be cautious. All she had to do was wait.

A slight motion from behind the bar caught her attention, and she glanced up at the bartender. Maria raised an eyebrow in silent question as she glanced at the engineer. Layla gave a slight head shake. No, not yet. An engineer was still an engineer, even when he was drunk. He probably had more security on his omni-tool than your average Cerberus bastard. It would take a bit before she was sure he was out of it enough not to notice her hacking straight into it.

All Maria gave was a curt nod, before shaking out her blonde hair and going back to serving patrons with a smile. Layla still couldn’t figure out how her friend could pull that mask on so easily, but she supposed it wasn’t surprising. Someone who had worked at Afterlife was bound to be adaptable. Then again, Aria hadn’t hired her friend for no reason.

Maria had been the daughter of an up and coming merc leader, who had started to get an ego much bigger than was healthy for Omega. When word had gotten out that he might be eying Aria’s throne, he had very quickly sent his only child to Omega’s uncrowned Queen. A hostage towards his good behavior, or at least that was what he had tried to convince everyone. Not that a single person had actually believed that, or been surprised when word began leaking out he was planning a major assault against the asari.

What had been slightly surprising was Aria’s reaction. She hadn’t killed Maria, but showed her proof that her father had just used her as a decoy. He had sent her to die, just to further his own ambitions. Then she had offered Maria a choice; either remain loyal to her father and die, or she could make her father pay for betraying for her. If she helped Aria by handing over all the information she could remember about her father’s operations, Aria would give her a place in her own organization. Maria hadn’t been stupid. She’d also remembered a lot about her father’s group. A hell of a lot. Layla actually remembered handling some of the information for Aria’s assault, but she hadn’t been involved directly. She hadn’t even meet Maria until after it was all over. After the dust had settled Aria had discovered that Maria had a very good memory for a human. She remembered everything she heard, and once it was in her mind she never forgot it. It had made her an ideal, low-key spy. Omega’s Queen had placed her as a bartender at Afterlife, and told her to report all the...interesting gossip she heard. 

Thinking about Afterlife was almost enough to make Layla wince. She had never thought she would actually miss Aria’s unofficial castle. The building still existed of course, but it flew Cerberus colors now. Their commander had realized it was still considered the center of Omega politics and quickly taken over. Of course, it wasn’t a club anymore. It was a command center, or The Headquarters as so many of the new clientele in the bar had called it. All Cerberus patrols and orders came from it. Which had meant, now that the biggest club on Omega was gone, people had to look harder to find somewhere to get drunk.

Which was why places like this had suddenly been making a killing. It might have once been a dive bar owned by an elcor, but some enterprising soul had realized that off-duty soldiers, even Cerberus bastards, would be looking for some way to relax.. So slap on a some new paint, put in a few new surfaces, and bam the place was ready for an all new clientele. Staffed entirely by humans like Maria of course. No way Cerberus would even allow a place run by aliens to exist this close to headquarters. Even asari were on their shit list, and much to the disappointment of the Afterlife dancers. All of them had been killed or fled during the takeover. When she was feeling charitable, Layla felt sorry for them. That wasn’t very often. In situations like this, you had to look after yourself and your own goals.

The hacker barely sipped her drink as she watched the engineer laugh at something one of his friends had said. That friend had better leave soon. She didn’t want to get closer with him there. There was a chance the friend might sober enough to remember her, and that was something they had been trying to avoid. What they were doing was risky enough as it was, no need to make it worse. Normally she wouldn’t even be attempting something like this until the bar was much busier and there was less a chance of someone being able to pick one face out of a crowd. It was safer that way. She had set those rules herself, back when they had started this operation.

Which was why she was the one who had chosen to break that set of rules.

Maria had seemed worried when she had came storming in and started making plans to pull their scam right there and then. It hadn’t even been that long since they had pulled their last grab, and they had been trying to stagger their information gathering. No sense in alerting Cerberus that something was up here. If all their officers that drank at this particular bar had their omni-tools hacked or their patrol routes leaked, then someone was going to get suspicious. Better to grab some data-packets, then lay low until the fuss about them had died down. Layla had fed her friend some lie about having heard something was up. She was sure Maria had saw right through it, but as long as her friend was going along with it she didn’t care what she thought. Internally, Layla knew she was moving too fast on her latest information. She should grab something to eat, get a good night’s rest in, then come back and plan things out better. But she couldn’t. Not now. She had to do something, and with Maria she had a chance at getting useful data out of it..

Almost if her thoughts had summoned her, Maria wandered over as if she was checking if she wanted anything else. 

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, her voice quiet. Not that anyone was near enough to really hear them, at least not yet. “We can wait, you know that.”

“I already told you that we can’t, not this time,” Layla snapped. “Cerberus is planning something and we need to figure out what they’re doing before anything else happens.” 

“We,” Maria said gently, “or just you? You’re acting like this is a lot more personal than a bunch of data or a possible strike.” 

Layla took a sip of her drink to avoid having to meet the bartender’s eyes. “It’s not. You’re imagining things.” 

“Layla,” Maria said, her voice gentle. “Did you hear something about..” 

“He’s moving,” the hacker cut off her friend before she could finish and nodded to where the engineer’s friend was finally leaving. She did not want to talk about that right now. She didn’t even want to think about the real reason she was here. This was already going to be complicated enough. Losing focus right now could be a disaster. She had to keep her mind as clear as she could.

In a way she almost welcomed the distraction. She didn’t have to think about anything else when she was hacking. 

Maria sighed, but there was a stubborn look in her eye that said they weren’t through with this. “So how are we going to play this one?” 

Layla glanced around, her eyes settling on the large holoscreen that was a little farther down along the bar. It was almost right in front of where the engineer was sitting. “That thing work yet?” 

A nod from Maria. “I should warn you though, it’s not getting anything but Cerberus propaganda. I’ve tried setting it to different frequencies, but the bastards have everything else blocked.” 

“Perfect,” Layla couldn’t help grinning for a moment before she tried to look annoyed and raised her voice. “So it doesn’t get Battlespace?” 

Surprise flashed across Maria’s eyes for a moment, before she put her hands on her hips. “I just told you that they blocked it didn’t I?” Even Layla was taken back by how genuinely mad her friend seemed, but the anger never reached Maria’s eyes. “So stop asking about it and wasting my time. Complaining about it isn’t going to magically make it appear.”

Slowly Layla stood, keeping all her movements careful and precise, as if she was trying not to fall over. “I don’t believe you,” she said loftily. “I think you’re just being lazy.” She knew that she wasn’t any sort of real actress, but part of life on Omega was learning how to control your emotions to a degree. You had to pick up that ability or else someone was going to take advantage of you. The performance might not have held up on stage, but she wasn’t going for an award either. She made her way over to the seat in front of the vidscreen - something that placed her only a seat away from the engineer. “Come on, turn it on! I want to watch!” 

“I already told you it’s not on,” Maria all but snarled, “but if you want to watch propaganda all day, hey, fine by me.” She flicked on the screen with a flourish. Immediately the same droning Cerberus propaganda about making order from chaos and helping humanity find it’s rightful place in the universe.

“Hey!” Layla pretended to say indignantly. It sounded more squeaky than outraged. She only hoped to god that the engineer was too drunk to notice. “Change it, I don’t want to listen to that.” 

“I said there’s nothing for me to change it too!” Maria snapped. “And I have actual work to do. If you want to mess with it yourself, feel free. Just remember if you break it, I’m making you pay for it.” Then the bartender went over to someone else who was call for her attention, very obviously ignoring her friend at the bar.

“Fine, be that way!” Layla brought up her omni-tool, and fiddled with it. The screen started to flicker and warp, exactly as if she was trying to hack it. Which she was, but not for any of the reasons they thought. She dropped a small program into that machine that would continue to mess with the screen, making it dance no matter what else she was doing with her omni-tool. She would get rid of it once she was done of course, but for now she needed its cover while she dealt with the engineer’s omni-tool. As long as Maria did her part, and kept an eye out for anyone sneaking up behind her, they would be fine. 

She kept one eye on the engineer as she worked her way slowly through the encryption he’d put in on his omni-tool. Some of it was the regular Cerberus ciphers that she could work her way through in her sleep by now, but he’d put in extra protections that were taking more time than she liked to take down. If she could just get passed the firewalls he had up...

“Ah, come on Layla,” someone shouted from behind her and she froze, heard pounding in her ears. She couldn’t have been noticed that fast! There wasn’t even anyone near her! Unless they had been monitoring her. Maybe she had slipped up somewhere, left behind traces she should have erased, or maybe their Talon contact had been been caught. If they’d been compromised then...  
“Leave the poor vidscreen alone,” the voice continued. “It’s giving me a headache, even if your additions are an improvement.” The last words were said sharply, and Layla didn’t even have to turn around to know that the owner was glaring at the engineer. Her heart was returning to a more normal rhythm now that she had actually registered who it was. She glanced back at Jackson, feeling the height of annoyance at him for putting him where he didn’t belong. He was a human who, like her and Maria, had elected to remain behind and play nice with Cerberus. Why, she wasn’t sure, but at least she knew he wasn’t exactly in league with them. 

“Shove it,” she yelled back at him. “I’ve never meet a piece of technology I couldn’t conquer, and I am not letting a vidscreen be my defeat!” She’d been friendly with him in the past. If she just started ignoring him then he would probably wonder why. If he figured out their little operation here, then she would lay money on him skipping off to Cerberus with it. Friendly he might be, but this was Omega. You looked after your own skin, and Cerberus would be willing to pay handsomely for information on the traitors in their midst. Better that he never find out at all.

Then they wouldn’t be forced to kill him 

“Now I know you’re drunk!” He shouted back, “You can mess with that vidscreen all you like, but you can’t change the broadcast .” 

“I can damn well try!” 

That brought on laughter, and she went back to work. Her program was almost through the firewall, just a little bit longer..

“He’s right, but I don’t blame you,” came the slurred speech from her right. This time, her heart almost stopped. It took every single drop of her self control to keep from jumping up and bolting. Slowly she looked over at the engineer, who was now looking right back at her. She trembled slightly, but forced herself to keep an indifferent face and take a deep breath. He wasn’t looking at her with suspicion, just with a sort of drunken smile on his face. “Fucking propaganda, huh?” 

Her mind shot through all the possibilities, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do. This was the first time she’d had a target engage her while she was in the middle of hacking into their damn omni-tool. If he had looked any less drunk she would have thought he was onto her, but he looked like he would have trouble telling left from right, let alone what she was doing. Still, he wasn’t totally dumb, and if he saw what she was doing then it was going to be all over. She glanced frantically at Maria who quickly made her way over. 

“I’m surprised you would say something like that,” her friend drawled pointedly. “I thought you guys wanted to brainwash Omega into supporting your little occupation.”

“Well, yeah,” the engineer said waving his hand around in a vague gesture. “Would make it easier to get all the damn aliens out and get things under control if you guys would actually help. It’s not like we’re just going to go away after all.” He shrugged “ But I mean, come on, I hear that speech every day. It’s not even that good. I told them it wasn’t going to work, and it was just going to piss of everyone if they kept it going on and on and on, but it’s not like they were going to listen to me.” He shook his head and glanced up at Maria. “Why the hell do you guys keep fighting us anyway? Not like a lot of us want to be fighting people.”

“Yeah,” Layla couldn’t help snapping. “Let’s all play nice and be perfectly polite to the people who waged a hostile takeover. Hail to the concerning heroes that destroyed half our lives. We have so many reasons to be thankful to you.” There was a small internal voice that was yelling at her to shut up, be smart, and not antagonize the Cerberus guy she was currently trying to get information from. She was going to get herself caught, and killed or worse. All she had to do was be quiet and work. 

She’d just had enough of smart-mouthed Cerberus coming in, taking over, and acting like they understood. Like somehow they were helping. Like chasing out half the aliens or letting them know they weren’t welcome was a good thing. 

“We aren’t trying to destroy anything,” the engineer protested. “We’re trying to help you out here! Make things better here! I don’t see why everyone here keeps acting like we’re the bad guys!” He shook his head. “I just don’t get why you’re fighting so hard for this hell hole.”

“It’s our home,” Maria growled. “I’m sure you’d be pretty pissed off too, if someone barged into your house and started shooting things up because they thought they were right and they were just “improving the situation”.” The bartender drew air quotes around the last words and Layla snorted over it. The Cerberus Engineer didn’t look pleased. 

“Why live here though?” he asked. “Why not leave? You can go anywhere in the else in the galaxy.”

“This is Omega,” Layla drew the words out slowly as if talking to a child. “It’s not exactly a vacation spot. People are here because they have reasons to be. Not all of them can afford to just pack up and skip off to somewhere nicer. Some people are here because the have no choice, some because they don’t have anywhere else to go.” She went back to working, more determined than ever to get everything she could off this bastard, even information that had nothing to do with the occupation. “Some of us even have friends here, that are now dead because of you. Even the Alliance didn’t go that far. So yeah, I would say that almost no one here is going to be clamoring to be your bestest friend forever.”

“The Alliance?” The engineer turned to look at her “You’ve dealt with the Alliance before?” He sounded half accusing when he said it. She wondered if he was a former soldier himself. Didn’t matter either way, but it would be useful to know how far she could push him. 

“If by dealing with you mean ‘running like hell away from them’, then yeah I’ve dealt with him.” She glanced out him out of the corner of her eye to see how he reacted to that, and tried to keep the fact that her stomach was twisting in knots out of her expression. This was stupid. She shouldn’t even be talking with him. Yeah, it might distract him but as long as his attention was on her, there was a chance he would notice what she was doing. 

“Managed to piss them off, huh?” The engineer smirked, and Layla restrained the urge to shock it off his face. “We get a lot of guys like that in Cerberus. The Alliance does a piss-poor job at looking after it’s people sometimes. Know a guy who ended up being kicked out for picking a fight with an alien and winning. The Alliance decided to play politics and got rid of him to make themselves look better. Bastards. Chose a turian over one of their own!. “ The last was said with a growl. He peered closer at her, and leaned forward a little. She leaned back just on reflex.

“What?”

“What did you do? You don’t look like you were a soldier.” His eyes swept up and down her body. Layla glared at him. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t gone with the ‘I’m not intimidating’ look for today. A blood-red long-sleeved, thigh length shirt with tight black pants and her favorite belt might have been useful in making sure Cerberus didn’t see her as a threat, but right now she would rather have been in full armor.

“How about pissing off an Alliance officer that looked at me the wrong way,” she growled, not even looking up from her omni-tool. Like hell was she going to tell him the real reason the Alliance had been after her blood. Cerberus seemed to be lacking in intel about her, or if the had it they had never bothered to use it. She wasn’t about to give them a reason to look any deeper.

“So, you’re a dangerous woman, huh?” he drew the words out and Layla looked over at him in disbelief. He was grinning at her, as if he thought he had discovered something clever as he slowly looked her up and down. She clenched her fist to stop from knocking his teeth in. “You know,” he continued, “you should join us.” 

Layla felt her mind blank for a moment. “What?” 

“Cerberus,” he said, as if she needed that clarification. “We’re always looking for people with the guts to stand up to the Alliance. Bet we could protect you from them. Get you off this rock?” He smiled as if he was offering her some sort of gift. Something that she should be excited about. Her mouth opened and she tried to form words that would lead to the best ‘screw you’ she could manage but she couldn’t find anything that would fit so just ended up gasping around the rage that choked her throat. 

Maria appeared almost out of nowhere. She dropped a bottle of something expensive looking in front of the engineer. “Here sweetheart, on the house,” she said with a grin. The engineer looked up at her, and Layla finally managed to take a breath she hadn’t realized she needed, and turned away from the engineer as fast as she could.

It was only then she realized she was trembling. 

Several deep breaths were required before she felt anything like normal, although the unsettled feeling in her stomach didn’t go away. Bastards. Yeah, she had ended up here because she’d pushed the Alliance too far, but at least that had been a (bad) choice she had made. And even though she’d been stranded, she worked her way up off the streets of one of the worst places in the galaxy. She’d had a reputation, skills, abilities people had been willing to pay her for. 

Then Cerberus had come storming in and smashed her entire network to pieces. Almost everything she had worked for, gone , just because a bunch of pro-human assholes decided they wanted a piece of Omega. Everyone she had depended on, everyone she cared about, had been nearly killed or disappeared because of them. Then they wanted her to join them? 

Oh, she was almost tempted. If she got in, she could feed a virus into their systems, have it corrupt everything they had here. Rip apart their automated defenses, leave their little groups stranded and leaderless. Let the gangs on Omega rip them apart when they had no backup, no support what-so-ever. See how long they lasted that way.

Sadly she wasn’t quite that suicidal. Let a hero take on a job like that.

Instead she started to recklessly head through the last of the defenses on the engineers omni-tool, and started pulling any information she could off of it. She wasn’t even sure he had anything useful on him at the moment, but she didn’t care. Even if he never figured it out, she would have her bit of petty revenge. What she would have liked to do was set his omni-tool to explode the next time he used it, then sit back and laugh at his burnt corpse, but she would restrain herself this once. 

The engineer was still drinking his bottle when she shut down her omni-tool and dropped her arm. Maria was hovering nearby, and headed over. “Giving up for now?” she asked, eyes flickering towards the screen. Layla realized that her program was still in place causing the screen itself to waver, and quickly shut it off with a few keystrokes. Sloppy, sloppy, her subconscious whispered to her. She tried to ignore it, but it was hard. That had been stupid, , unprofessional, and they were in a place where even a small mistake could get you killed. 

“Yeah,” she said out loud, standing up. “It’s not worth it.” The words rang with more weight than she had meant, but Maria didn’t remark on them. Layla made her way back to her little corner, making sure she was out of sight before starting to dig through the data she had dragged up. Most of it was useless. Personal correspondence that didn’t give anything they could use, although it was potentially embarrassing. She saved that for possible later use. Bulletins and memos from Cerberus weren’t really that informative because they displayed half of that information on boards around the city...she snarled in frustration before looking a little deeper. The patrol routes, confidential memos, vague hints at plans and engineering projects...she saved all those but barely paid any attention to it after she determined what was valuable. She dug deeper, finding some initial plans for rerouting the power, and shoved that into the ‘valuable’ pile as well. 

There was nothing about prisoners, recent engagements, or even any signs that this engineer had been involved in anything interesting recently. “And you’re worthless,” Layla muttered under her breath, and glanced over at the engineer. He was staggering to his feet now, and saying something to Maria she didn’t catch. The bartender laughed, and shooed him away. Both of them watched the man stagger out the door. Maria headed over to her as soon as he was gone. 

“Anything?” she said in a low voice, leaning over the bar slightly. 

Layla glanced at the few other bar patrons, and slipped a datapad onto the counter when she was sure none of them were looking. “Here’s all I could get,” she said softly. “It’s not much, since the guy was apparently an idiot, but there are some plans for power rerouting. Might give us an idea if they’re planning something or not.” 

“Got it.” Layla didn’t even see the datapad disappear. “I’ll let someone know we have a delivery to pick up.” Maria had grinned as she said the last. There were a small handful of contacts that would drift into their bar once in awhile, just to see if they had picked up any worthwhile intel. They were careful, professional, and tried to keep who they were working for secret. 

Layla didn’t have the heart to tell them she knew they were working for the Talons. That was the most organized resistance on Omega. It really wasn’t that hard to figure out, not when the intel she had dug up had sparked a couple of strikes from them.

“You have anything interesting to add?” she asked Maria. Although Layla liked to believe she did the lion’s share of their spy work, but she couldn’t ignore her friends contribution either. The blonde had put her experience in Afterlife to good work here, using her skills to draw out conversations that would let something slip, then adding that information to the data they already had.

Maria never charged full-price to Cerberus personnel either. It made this place popular with them. They thought she was trying to suck up to them. Layla was just happy they hadn’t noticed how loose the alcohol made their tongues. 

“I might have something,” the bartender said, “I’ll put it in later, after things get closed down.” Layla nodded and went back to the data, not bother to ask what it was. Better that neither of them knew the details of everything the other did. Maria went back to serving the patrons, ears open to see if she could get anything else useful.

The hacker was pretty sure she had managed to get anything that the resistance could use out of the information she had. That didn’t mean she was done with it. She was still going to sort through his personal mail, try to find out if he had been involved in any raids recently, or at least heard about them. There was nothing though, no matter how hard she looked. A snarl escaped her throat and she propped her elbows on the bar before dropping her head into her hands. 

After a while she heard Maria stop in front of her. “Mind telling me what this is really about now?” her friend asked quietly. “You stormed in here lookin like you wanted to kill something, and insisted we needed information now without even telling me what was going on. If it was something that big and important, I would have expected you to explain yourself.”  
“Then you pick an engineer, probably the riskiest mark in here, to go after. Now you’re looking like you’re half-dead yourself and you’re barely showing any interest in what I’m giving the resistance. You’re nosy Layla, this isn’t like you.” Maria sighed. “I know you think you can handle anything and everything, but I’m your friend. You know you can trust me. And not only that,” she added, “but I’m your partner in this as well. I deserve to know what this was all about. I was putting my own neck on the line for it too.”

Layla was silent for a moment, unsure how to answer. She knew that Maria’s points were valid ones. She’d gone over them herself as she’d been walking here. Logic had just been something she didn’t feel like listening to then. Not telling Maria, though, she knew there was no real reason for that. Just admitting to the real reason that she had come running down here, to the fact that her emotions had overran her own common sense, that was what was hard. She was used to being in control, or at least acting like she was. It was how you got respect in Omega. 

She didn’t need to look up to know that Maria was hovering over her anxiously. After a second she heaved out a breath and decided to get it over with. “I got word that a ‘gang’ of batarians had been cornered by Cerberus troops a few days ago. I couldn’t find any detail on it, and since it’s Cerberus, who doesn't know a damn thing about Omega and can’t even tell aliens apart...”

Maria sucked in a sharp breath. “And did you..?” she trailed off uncertainly. 

“Nothing,” Layla said sharply, fingers digging into her forehead. “I can’t find anything about it since Cerberus doesn’t seem to consider it important enough to send details to most of the operatives, and since they can’t tell a single fucking batarian apart, they’re just counting them as ‘enemy combatants’ .” Not that anyone on Omega really cared about the names of the people they shot, unless said victim was important or wealthy enough for them to notice, but Cerberus thinking they could get away with the same was insulting.

“No news is good news?” Maria said halfheartedly, just as she had the last couple of time news that might link to Bray had shown up. 

Layla snarled under her breath. “Shut the fuck up. Stop saying that.” She raised her head a bit and glared at the blonde. “I’m not an idiot. I don’t need someone patting me on the head and telling me I should be grateful I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Because you know what? I’m not. It’s worse not knowing anything. Even hearing he’s already dead would be better than sitting here just waiting for something to fall into my lap.” 

“If I thought you were serious about that, I would be worried,” Maria said Layla saw her glance around at the rest of the bar. There were other patrons still there, Layla knew, but she didn’t care who heard this. It wasn’t like she was the only one who was searching for someone who had gone missing since the Adjunct attack. At any other time she might have been paranoid about someone figuring out she was actually worried about another person and shattering her image of an aloof professional, but that didn’t matter now. Not with most of her contacts and customers scattered. There was no one left to care anymore. 

“I am serious,” she told her friend as she straightened up in her chair and ran a hand through her hair to get it out of her face. “I’m not saying I want him dead...” and the thought that the most likely scenario was that he was gone hurt each time she thought about it. Hurt pretty badly, if she wanted to admit it. She’d been trying to make herself to adjust to it, to make it so it didn’t hurt when she thought about it. For some reason that hadn’t been helping much.  
“But at least if he was gone, and I knew it? I could start to get over it or something. Not have to worry about what’s going on anymore.”

“Layla,” Maria said softly, but the hacker shook her head. 

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Don’t fuss about it.” Not that she really felt that fine. She was a hacker. An information broker when she felt like it. Knowledge was her stock-in-trade, yet here she was, stuck without access to the one piece of information she really wanted. Ask her to get information for the merc group raising hell for Cerberus? Noo problem! She could do that! Getting information on the one damn batarian that she was searching for? Apparently that was beyond her. She hadn’t even known that could happen.

She dropped her head back down, forehead resting on the palm of her hands. When everything had gone all to hell after the adjutants had shown up and Cerberus had betrayed them all, she’d sent Bray a message telling him to get the hell off the station while he had the chance. Cerberus seemed to go with the ‘fuck yeah humans’ approach to everything, so she had been sure she was going to be all right. The non-humans though? Anyone that had resisted was shot on sight, and she knew Bray. He wouldn't just have rolled over and given up. She had hoped that he would actually listen to her message, that he would take her advice and bug out. 

She had never gotten a message back from him. 

There were logical, less terrifying reasons why he hadn’t been able to answer. Cerberus had blocked most communications in and out of the station to avoid coordinated attacks against them. It was possible to get around the blocks, but Bray had never been much of a hacker and she couldn’t see him hiring someone just to get a message to her. Her message might not have gone though because the communications channels had been chaos once the fighting started. His omni-tool could have been damaged and lost messages. Those were faint hopes however, and her mind kept going back to the equally logical and far more realistic reasons behind it. 

He could be dead, either killed in the fighting at the start of the attack, in the resistance movements after it, or by an adjutant that had gotten loose. He could even be an adjutant right now, wandering the station with no idea what, or who he had been. Or, maybe he had been in one of the areas that Cerberus had flushed in an attempted to get rid of the adjutants lurking there. He would have suffocated to death, with no way of getting out..

God damn it she’d been trying not to think about this. She had better things to do. If she hadn’t found that little blurb of information, or if she had just been able to ignore it, if she didn’t fucking care....this would be so much easier. She glanced under her arms at the merc who was still drinking at the bar. Jackson hadn’t seemed to suffer much from the Cerberus invasion. The only thing he cared about was if he could still find work, and all he had to do for that was sign up with Cerberus. He wouldn’t have any objections to what they were doing, just as long as he got to shoot something. Lucky bastard. 

There was a clink on the surface of the bar in front of her. Layla looked to find herself staring at a small, but still rather high end, bottle of asari wine. “That,” she said as she glanced up at Maria in confusion, “looks expensive.” And only going to get more so with Cerberus controlling the station. The likelihood of their conquerors letting them import anymore Thessian wines was probably down near the probability of ‘never’.

“It is,” Maria agreed. “But you looked like you could use a drink. No one else has been asked for it, so I figured it should go to a good cause.” 

“Well, I’m not one to complain about free anything..” Layla started to reach out for the bottle. Getting a little bit drunk did sound appealing. As long as she was drunk enough to start babbling like an idiot.

Then Maria pulled the bottle out of reach again. 

“Hey! What they fuck are you doing?” Layla grabbed at the bottle, but her friend just took another step back.

“I,” Maria said, trying to sound serious but failing, “am making sure you get some rest. The only way you’re getting your hands on this is if you agree to take it home with you.”

The hacker just started at her for a moment. ‘Home’ meant her apartment. She and Maria were sharing it for now. She’d dragged her friend there when the gangs had found out Aria was gone and started fighting for control of the station. The security measures she had in place were much, much better than anything Maria could do at her own apartment. They’d ended up keeping that arrangement after Cerberus had shown up because neither of them felt it was safe to split up. Besides, Maria’s apartment had been cut off by the barriers Cerberus had put up.

“Wait,” Layla sat all the way up, “Did you just tell me to go home and get drunk? ...You do realize you are officially the best friend in the galaxy, right?” 

“Yeah, I know,” Maria had a grin on her, “but I’m not just doing this to be nice. You fell asleep after a glass of this stuff last time. I’m hoping it works the same way again.” 

“Okay, slightly less awesome.” Layla sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I’m not that bad off. You don’t have to play mother hen.” 

“You’ve been up for at least a day straight.” Her friend pointed out. “And you’ve been stressing yourself out over this. Go home, get some rest, and if you do I’ll ask if anyone has heard anything when the pickup arrives. And no,” Maria cut her off before she could ask anything. “I’m not going to tell you when they're coming. If you stay up any longer you're going to make a mistake.”

The last words rang true in Layla’s head, as much as she didn’t want to admit to it. She knew from experience that if you didn’t get enough sleep, you’re judgment wasn’t what it was supposed to be and you let something slip you shouldn’t have. It was something that had burned her before. 

“Fine,” she said after a moment. “Just give me the damn bottle.” 

“So, you’ll...?” 

“Yes, mother,” Layla didn’t dignify her response with even an eye-roll, “I’ll be a good little girl and skip along home before I get drunk off my ass.” 

“If I was your mother I would have drowned myself years ago,” Maria shot back, but handed over the bottle all the same. “Just watch yourself on the way back.” 

“And now I can’t make a ‘mom’ crack since I just made one,” Layla grabbed the bottle. “You know I’m always careful.” She hesitated for a second. “Hey. If you do hear anything, will you...” 

“You’ll be the first one I send a message to.” 

Layla nodded, and turned to leave. She caught sight of Jackson as she did so, and remembered something an Eclipse merc had smacked into her years ago. ‘Only those who can survive on their own thrive on Omega’. She’d been trying for years to live up to that, to become as self-sufficient as Jackson was, but she just couldn’t find the strength to exist entirely on her own. The few people she trusted she found herself looking to as friends. 

On days like today, with all those feelings and emotions clashing together, she couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.


End file.
